Historical Jesus

[acbytesla]

I have always thought the historicity of a Jesus who may have been crucified to not really be relevant.

That an itinerant rabbi may have been executed is hardly remarkable. His existence is certainly debatable since there is very little to prove it. That doesn't mean this man was divine or that any of the miracles happened or that the words attributed to him were accurate.

I don't believe there was a Jesus or that there is a god. But even if both exists/existed, it doesn't prove what has been written about either is accurate.

The question I always ask Christians is why do they think they know what they believe? I have yet to hear even a remotely satisfactory answer. They almost always say it is based on faith. And faith is the most piss poor reason to believe anything.

 

[David Mo]

I have always thought the historicity of a Jesus who may have been crucified to not really be relevant.

This is the point. The belief or non-belief on the existence of a misty Jesus -not the Jesus of the gospels- depends from so thin arguments than everyone can belief what they like. Without the existence of powerful Christian churches the subject would not deserve more than ten lines, so to speak.
But this subject rises turbid feelings and here we are.

 

[metacristi]

It is interesting what would happen if the consensus of the Biblical scholars changed in Jesus most probably did not exist (conceivable in the future, if the influence of the Church in the biblical studies field were weaken significantly). I don't think the established Church would accept that conclusion, the fundamentalists worldwide will develop their own 'alternative' science which to make at least agnosticism the default (plenty of space even for a marginally rational belief).

 

[acbytesla]

This is the point. The belief or non-belief on the existence of a misty Jesus -not the Jesus of the gospels- depends from so thin arguments than everyone can belief what they like. Without the existence of powerful Christian churches the subject would not deserve more than ten lines, so to speak.
But this subject rises turbid feelings and here we are.

There was a time in my life I argued that Jesus existed, but EVERYTHING we thought we knew about him was suspect. That Jesus came to earth basically just to tell us to treat each other better and to believe in ourselves. That we are as much as a god as him. We just didn't believe in ourselves. Jesus was God's son, but everyone was God's children. There are verses in the Bible that supports this idea.

As long as we were honest and challenging ourselves to be the very best version of ourselves and treated each other with the love that we apply to family that we would be treated with the blessings of God's love.

I also tossed all the negative things in the bible especially the aversion to sex. I mean seriously, how could it be wrong to engage in an activity that all living breathing creatures engage in? Also, God wouldn't have made it so much fun just to tell us not to do it.

My bible would have a lot fewer rules. But these would be among them. Be honest with each other and yourself, don't steal or cheat, don't kill, don't hurt each other physically or emotionally. And learn as well as teach. Challenge your mind and your beliefs. Never be afraid to admit you don't know something or that you're wrong.

I even contemplated creating my own church based on these tenets.

 

[HansMustermann]

Well, if we're talking a story with a positive message, sure, I can get behind that.

If we're talking about historicity, though, it's hard to claim any reasonably evidence that that's what Jeshua bar Joseph actually preached. The quality of the sources is downright abysmal, by historian standards.

And then there's the question of whether the right sources even made it into the Bible. There were a TON of alternative stories. And you can't dismiss all of them as just some very late fanfic. E.g., Papias falls somewhere between Luke and John, but he records a lot of stories about Jesus that aren't anywhere in the canonical gospels. And conversely, and perhaps even more suspiciously, for all his effort to basically be the first actual historiographer of Jesus (albeit, with a crap methodology) and gather information from all over the Middle East, he never seems to have heard of ANY of the stories that did make it into our gospels. So, anyway, if John makes the cut to be taken as a source in Bible Studies, shouldn't Papias be somwhere in there too?

He's not the only one. Infancy gospels as a genre started arguably even before Luke, and some date the gospel of Thomas before Luke AND even Matthew. In fact, some want it to be the mythical Q source. And they can be dismissed to be fanfic elaborating on Mark (although at least Thomas is different enough), but then the same can be said for Matthew and Luke too.

And it's not like they just have different spins on some common "dudes, be excellent to each other" theme. In fact some differ quite radically.

Take the gnostics for example. No, really, take them

It could get as different as the Cainites, for whom yeah, Cain was the real hero. It's like something out of White Wolf, to be honest.

Or then there's the Gospel Of Judas. It's not JUST that it's from a sect where Judas was the real disciple and favourite of Judas, the only one who was taught the true gnosis, but their whole belief system is... bizarre at the very least. And I bring it up because it ties into the whole, "yeah, but Jesus said to be excellent to each other" myth.

Well, these guys were basically Cainites or an offshoot thereof. Their cosmology started with a supreme divine being who created a perfect world called Pleroma (fullness or completeness) and populated it with basically the next rank of divine beings. Then one of these is somehow cast out, gets bored of sitting around in the void outside that Pleroma universe, and creates her own world and populates it with even less perfect divine beings. In fact, by this stage these are anything but perfect. They're more like what you'd call demons. And this still isn't our world. Then two of these guys, literally called Rebel and Fool create our world as basically a trap from which souls can't escape.

Except through the secret knowledge, i.e., gnosis. Told you they were gnostic. This is the actual message that Jesus came to give us, according to them. It has nothing to do with being excellent to each other HERE, but how to disobey the rules hard enough to get to the next level when you die.

It may sound bizarre by now, but remember these guys were worshipping Cain as their hero. We're talking about the first murderer.

So why would this guy be their hero? Well, not for any modern reasons like "believe in yourself instead of blindly obeying" or selecting the proper kind of sacrifice or anything. He's their hero BECAUSE he broke the rules. He's their hero BECAUSE he's a murderer.

Because, remember, this world was made basically by demons as a trap. The rules are given by that Fool demon, and are there to keep you trapped here. Breaking the rules is how you set yourself free.

So, long story short, take the 10 commandments and use them as a TO DO list. At least go do some adultery and coveting, if you don't have the stomach for the real hardcore stuff

Yeah, I imagine the recruiting drive must have been popular

But yeah, that's the kind of context in or from which THEIR Jesus came to save you.

 

[acbytesla]

Well, if we're talking a story with a positive message, sure, I can get behind that.

If we're talking about historicity, though, it's hard to claim any reasonably evidence that that's what Jeshua bar Joseph actually preached. The quality of the sources is downright abysmal, by historian standards.

And then there's the question of whether the right sources even made it into the Bible. There were a TON of alternative stories. And you can't dismiss all of them as just some very late fanfic. E.g., Papias falls somewhere between Luke and John, but he records a lot of stories about Jesus that aren't anywhere in the canonical gospels. And conversely, and perhaps even more suspiciously, for all his effort to basically be the first actual historiographer of Jesus (albeit, with a crap methodology) and gather information from all over the Middle East, he never seems to have heard of ANY of the stories that did make it into our gospels. So, anyway, if John makes the cut to be taken as a source in Bible Studies, shouldn't Papias be somwhere in there too?

He's not the only one. Infancy gospels as a genre started arguably even before Luke, and some date the gospel of Thomas before Luke AND even Matthew. In fact, some want it to be the mythical Q source. And they can be dismissed to be fanfic elaborating on Mark (although at least Thomas is different enough), but then the same can be said for Matthew and Luke too.

And it's not like they just have different spins on some common "dudes, be excellent to each other" theme. In fact some differ quite radically.

Take the gnostics for example. No, really, take them

It could get as different as the Cainites, for whom yeah, Cain was the real hero. It's like something out of White Wolf, to be honest.

Or then there's the Gospel Of Judas. It's not JUST that it's from a sect where Judas was the real disciple and favourite of Judas, the only one who was taught the true gnosis, but their whole belief system is... bizarre at the very least. And I bring it up because it ties into the whole, "yeah, but Jesus said to be excellent to each other" myth.

Well, these guys were basically Cainites or an offshoot thereof. Their cosmology started with a supreme divine being who created a perfect world called Pleroma (fullness or completeness) and populated it with basically the next rank of divine beings. Then one of these is somehow cast out, gets bored of sitting around in the void outside that Pleroma universe, and creates her own world and populates it with even less perfect divine beings. In fact, by this stage these are anything but perfect. They're more like what you'd call demons. And this still isn't our world. Then two of these guys, literally called Rebel and Fool create our world as basically a trap from which souls can't escape.

Except through the secret knowledge, i.e., gnosis. Told you they were gnostic. This is the actual message that Jesus came to give us, according to them. It has nothing to do with being excellent to each other HERE, but how to disobey the rules hard enough to get to the next level when you die.

It may sound bizarre by now, but remember these guys were worshipping Cain as their hero. We're talking about the first murderer.

So why would this guy be their hero? Well, not for any modern reasons like "believe in yourself instead of blindly obeying" or selecting the proper kind of sacrifice or anything. He's their hero BECAUSE he broke the rules. He's their hero BECAUSE he's a murderer.

Because, remember, this world was made basically by demons as a trap. The rules are given by that Fool demon, and are there to keep you trapped here. Breaking the rules is how you set yourself free.

So, long story short, take the 10 commandments and use them as a TO DO list. At least go do some adultery and coveting, if you don't have the stomach for the real hardcore stuff

Yeah, I imagine the recruiting drive must have been popular

But yeah, that's the kind of context in or from which THEIR Jesus came to save you.

It seems to me, the entire bible is fan fiction with absolutely no reasonable way for a thinking person to ever discern what might actually be true.

There were many so non-canonical Gospels. So why do we accept only the four that are in the Bible? Because the council of Rome more than 300 years later said, these are the stories about Jesus we're going to accept? Seriously?

I use to believe the Gospels were written by actual witnesses of Jesus's life and teachings. I remember when I started to doubt this. I was pretty young. But I couldn't help notice how similar Matthew, Mark and Luke were to each other. How the same events that each witnessed were in exactly the same order. How was that possible?

It was only later in life did I learn that the Gospels in the bible were written as much as a half a century after Jesus's life and they were anonymous. That was the moment it became clear that even if there was a Jesus who was the son of God, the likelihood that his teachings were accurately recorded was close to zero.

And this was before I read about Marcion or knew anything about the many Gospels that were dismissed three centuries later.

This is what really troubles me about Evangelicals insisting that the Bible is the unerring word of God. My question to them is how did they decide this?

 

[pgwenthold]

There was a time in my life I argued that Jesus existed, but EVERYTHING we thought we knew about him was suspect.

I always find this interesting. If "everything we thought we knew about [Jesus] is suspect" then how do you identify a Jesus who existed? If Jesus is not the guy described in the bible, then who is he?

 

[IanS]

There is indeed the tendency among the scholars of the New Testament field to claim that Jesus almost certainly existed, which seemingly make belief the rational stance. The problem is of course that the peculiar methodologies used currently are deficient and cannot warrant such a strong assertion, thus preferring alternatives is actually still rational. But i would not say that historicism is dead, in spite of the current stagnation, actually even Carrier leaves the door wide open to such a possibility. The most rational stance I see is to avoid a too strong commitment (I never understood the mythicists who speak as if it is almost certainty), although of course we can have personal preferences on what 'research program' seems more promising on long run (based on some viable justification, not necessarily the program making most progress at this time). Hopefully the next generation of Biblical scholars will be more receptive to the new and finally bring rationality to the field. Even with the cost of admitting agnosticism or, why not, that mythicism has the edge.

OK, most of the above is fine ... except - who are these mythicist's "who speak as if it is almost certainty"?

I don't think anyone here has said anything remotely like that.

And as you yourself just noted, even Richard Carrier only says that it seems to him about 3 to 1 more likely (on what he regards as the best evidence) that Jesus probably did not exist as a single individual in the early part of the 1st century AD.

The problem in this subject is not that some tiny number of mythicists might say they feel sure Jesus did not exist, but rather that billions of theists around the world do insist that it's a certainty that he existed (apparently, according to Bart Ehrman, “almost all properly trained scholars on the planet” agree with Ehrman when he repeatedly wrote that “Jesus certainly existed”).

Or to put all that more simply – the real surprise in this entire subject, is that it does now seem as if there is a real possibility that the person upon which Christianity is founded, never even existed! And that would surely be a pretty serious problem for around 2 billion or more Christians all over the world.

 

[acbytesla]

I always find this interesting. If "everything we thought we knew about [Jesus] is suspect" then how do you identify a Jesus who existed? If Jesus is not the guy described in the bible, then who is he?

Well we know generally his basic teachings of love, forgiveness and empowerment were true. But the rest was just irrelevant details. My Jesus wouldn't have us arguing over how to be saved or who and how we could and should have sex with.

I still think that is the only valuable part of the holy babble.

 

[smartcooky]

IMO, while the message of the bible is valid (if the world really was a place without war, prejudice, greed and hunger then what a wonderful place it would be), the method of delivery of that message is completely wrong.

Filling people's minds with dread and fear is not the way to instil righteousness. Look how many wars have been fought over which religion is the correct one? Faith in one god or another can get you killed depending on where on earth you happen to live, or even visit in the current climate.

 

[acbytesla]

IMO, while the message of the bible is valid (if the world really was a place without war, prejudice, greed and hunger then what a wonderful place it would be), the method of delivery of that message is completely wrong.

Filling people's minds with dread and fear is not the way to instil righteousness. Look how many wars have been fought over which religion is the correct one? Faith in one god or another can get you killed depending on where on earth you happen to live, or even visit in the current climate.

Some of the messages are valid/worthwhile. IMO, most in fact are not. The bible is unfortunately chock full of horrible ideas. Even ones that Jesus taught. Such as take no thought for the morrow or vicarious redemption. The Old Testament is flat out awful. The God character that we are supposed to praise and worship is truly evil. He's narcissistic, racist, sexist, psychopathic and anything but just.

 

[IanS]

Well we know generally his basic teachings of love, forgiveness and empowerment were true. But the rest was just irrelevant details. My Jesus wouldn't have us arguing over how to be saved or who and how we could and should have sex with.

I still think that is the only valuable part of the holy babble.

It could not have been "his basic teaching" if he never existed!

As for whose teaching preaching it actually was, I don't think we have any idea who was responsible for what eventually came to be written down and preserved for people to copy many centuries later, do we?

As far as "details" are concerned - I think the details are always of prime importance in any account that claims to be factually true, aren't they?

And if it comes to that - I'm not sure we can talk about "love & forgiveness" as "truths" either. Those are just very general concepts for which anyone could say all sorts of things.

 

[HansMustermann]

The problem in this subject is not that some tiny number of mythicists might say they feel sure Jesus did not exist, but rather that billions of theists around the world do insist that it's a certainty that he existed (apparently, according to Bart Ehrman, “almost all properly trained scholars on the planet” agree with Ehrman when he repeatedly wrote that “Jesus certainly existed”).

The problem is more one of... terminology, though, so to speak.

I mean, the same Ehrman will cheerfully tell you that at most 30% of what Jesus said in the bible can possibly come from the same person, and that he disagrees with the others in the field about which 30%. Also that you can discount any magical episodes.

And I mean, not just in some interviews on the side. He'll write books and go around giving public lectures about that.

But back to what it means, even if you were to grant him the premise that the Bible is enough evidence that someone said this and that, there must be at least 4 different Jesuseseses mixed up in there. And actually if you look at the reconstructions that people did, that's more like two dozen, and that's counting just the ones that do pass the second premise. (I.e., no magical girl Jesus allowed )

And if you look at the one that he's proposing, sure, it's not impossible or even particularly improbable that SOME guy back then was preaching that and SOMEHOW got nailed for it. (Most of the reconstructions have a big gaping plot hole for a historically believable reason to nail him.)

BUT basically my contention is that that reconstruction is not what I'd call a historical Jesus. If you strip all the defining attributes of someone and add your own stuff instead, are you even talking about the same person? I mean, the connection, even if I were to skip over the problems with the methodology and evidence and absolutely grant Ehrman that yep, the book is totally based on that one guy he reconstructed, the connection seems to me EXACTLY like that between Lovecraft's mom and Abdul Al Hazred. Sure, the latter is based on the former, but once you replace the attributes like where she lived, in what year, what she believed, what she wrote, where she travelled, etc, can you REALLY say that she's the historical mad arab? Or can we say that while the latter started based on the former, it grew into being a completely different entity?

 

[HansMustermann]

It seems to me, the entire bible is fan fiction with absolutely no reasonable way for a thinking person to ever discern what might actually be true.

While I'll agree with that, but for what I was saying, my emphasis wasn't on "fan fiction" but on "very late". One trick the bible accuracy proponents tend to do is claim that suspiciously the same arbitrary set of sources in Irenaeus are the real deal because they date them as early and possible, so supposedly those had to have had witnesses and whatnot. (I'll disagree with the last part too, but there we go.) So basically if the limits imposed by studying the content and/or lettering say it's written anywhere between 75 CE and 125 CE, then it gets dated as 75 CE. Whereas the sources they don't like get pushed as late as possible, and dismissed as basically by that point they were only pulling fanfic out of the butt.

Unless they decide they like them again, in which case they get pushed early too. Which is what those who want Thomas to be Q do with its dating.

What I was pointing out is just that even that trick doesn't get rid of all inconvenient sources.

 

[acbytesla]

It could not have been "his basic teaching" if he never existed!

As for whose teaching preaching it actually was, I don't think we have any idea who was responsible for what eventually came to be written down and preserved for people to copy many centuries later, do we?

As far as "details" are concerned - I think the details are always of prime importance in any account that claims to be factually true, aren't they?

And if it comes to that - I'm not sure we can talk about "love & forgiveness" as "truths" either. Those are just very general concepts for which anyone could say all sorts of things.

I don't disagree with any of that. I was trying not to throw the baby out with the bath water. I didn't want to say I was an atheist. I was part of the church even though I barely believed any of it. I enjoyed the company and the community. I think the message that we are our brother's keeper and to love one another were something worth holding on to.

But when it came down to it, I felt like a fraud going along with it. And no amount of having Pascal's Wager being thrown at me would ever change that the stories are not believable.

I remember having this discussion with my pastor. I couldn't choose to believe what my mind told me was false. And if there were a god who knew my thoughts, pretending I believed was not going to save me.

 

[smartcooky]

BUT basically my contention is that that reconstruction is not what I'd call a historical Jesus. If you strip all the defining attributes of someone and add your own stuff instead, are you even talking about the same person? I mean, the connection, even if I were to skip over the problems with the methodology and evidence and absolutely grant Ehrman that yep, the book is totally based on that one guy he reconstructed, the connection seems to me EXACTLY like that between Lovecraft's mom and Abdul Al Hazred. Sure, the latter is based on the former, but once you replace the attributes like where she lived, in what year, what she believed, what she wrote, where she travelled, etc, can you REALLY say that she's the historical mad arab? Or can we say that while the latter started based on the former, it grew into being a completely different entity?

I think that a single historical Jesus is extremely unlikely to have ever existed.

Jesus was supposed to have lived for about 30 years sometime between about 6BC and about 30AD. The first (synoptic) Gospels were not written until around 70 AD, which means that there was a period of about 40 years after Jesus' supposed death when hardly anyone had heard of him or knew who he was.

Christian churches attempt account for this lack of public knowledge by conveniently having Paul spread the word during that intervening period. However, there is a really big problem what that explanation. If Paul knew the story of Jesus and was spreading it far and wide, how come he didn't tell anyone about (in no particular order)..

The virgin birth
The flight into Egypt
Entering Jerusalem
The last supper
The raising of Lazarus
Jesus before Pontius Pilate
The Massacre of the Innocents
The Baptism of Christ by John
The wedding feast
Walking on water
Transfiguration
Jesus and the Doctors
Mary Magdalene
The woman of Samaria
The Jewish Mob
The trial of Jesus
The Judas Kiss

None of this stuff appears in the Jesus mythos until the Gospel of Mark and later, and most importantly, Paul makes no mention of the divinity of Jesus, and he does not remind his congregations of what Jesus said and did. Why was that?

What I think is a far more likely scenario is that the man the bible refers to as Jesus is a conglomerate mishmash of several different characters; all nomadic lay preachers; their words all recorded, first by word of mouth, and then later by being written down years after they were all dead, and then attributed to the one man by those authors. In NT times, nomadic lay preachers were a dime a dozen.

What I think Paul does is spread the general word of these preachers, and in so doing he, in a very real sense, he is the true founder of Christianity.

 

[acbytesla]

I think that a single historical Jesus is extremely unlikely to have ever existed.

Jesus was supposed to have lived for about 30 years sometime between about 6BC and about 30AD. The first (synoptic) Gospels were not written until around 70 AD, which means that there was a period of about 40 years after Jesus' supposed death when hardly anyone had heard of him or knew who he was.

Christian churches attempt account for this lack of public knowledge by conveniently having Paul spread the word during that intervening period. However, there is a really big problem what that explanation. If Paul knew the story of Jesus and was spreading it far and wide, how come he didn't tell anyone about (in no particular order)..

The virgin birth
The flight into Egypt
Entering Jerusalem
The last supper
The raising of Lazarus
Jesus before Pontius Pilate
The Massacre of the Innocents
The Baptism of Christ by John
The wedding feast
Walking on water
Transfiguration
Jesus and the Doctors
Mary Magdalene
The woman of Samaria
The Jewish Mob
The trial of Jesus
The Judas Kiss

None of this stuff appears in the Jesus mythos until the Gospel of Mark and later, and most importantly, Paul makes no mention of the divinity of Jesus, and he does not remind his congregations of what Jesus said and did. Why was that?

What I think is a far more likely scenario is that the man the bible refers to as Jesus is a conglomerate mishmash of several different characters; all nomadic lay preachers; their words all recorded, first by word of mouth, and then later by being written down years after they were all dead, and then attributed to the one man by those authors. In NT times, nomadic lay preachers were a dime a dozen.

What I think Paul does is spread the general word of these preachers, and in so doing he, in a very real sense, he is the true founder of Christianity.

I don't know we can say really anything about Jesus's personage. I find it interesting that the first writings about him were writings of Paul twenty years after Jesus was supposed to have lived and all of his information is supposedly second or third hand.

It's not for another 20 years that the first Gospel was written, presumably Mark. I have a good memory, yet the idea that I would remember a conversation with any degree of accuracy a month later would be suspect let alone years or decades.

It's one think to say you're a Christian, it's absurd to claim that the bible is the inerrant word of God.

 

[HansMustermann]

@smartcooky
Actually, just for accuracy sake, Paul does mention exactly one thing on your list, namely the last supper, in 1 Corinthians 11:17-34. In fact, he's probably the one who started that story.

However, that only makes the problem you mention even more conspicuous by being the exception that proves the rule, so to speak. And it's actually even worse than you seem to think.

The thing is, the last supper and a couple of other instances show that Paul has no problem referring to something that his Jesus said (albeit usually in his hallucinations,) when it serves his point. But there are more instances all over the place where he rules about this or that as his own opinion and on his own authority, although the later gospels say that Jesus himself has already said the same thing. So why does Paul spend whole pages arguing some point, even when his congregation is apparently split by people saying something else and gaining traction with their own version, instead of just going "Jesus said I'm right, that other guy is wrong" and settling it once and for all?

And if he didn't know what Jesus said on all those points, how come that suspiciously the Gospel Jesus always matches Paul's version?

Could it be that Gospel Jesus is just fanfic on Paul's Jesus?

 

[HansMustermann]

It's not for another 20 years that the first Gospel was written, presumably Mark. I have a good memory, yet the idea that I would remember a conversation with any degree of accuracy a month later would be suspect let alone years or decades.

It's even worse. It's not just the scholar consensus, but even church doctrine, that Mark was actually not a witness himself. Mark was most probably written in Rome, and it's obviously by some guy who not only wasn't an eyewitness, but didn't even know the language or the place. So how good his memory was is rather irrelevant.

The church gets around it by claiming that Mark was basically the secretary of Peter, the first pope, so basically it's really Peter being the gospel author.

That however still doesn't solve most problems. Mark is still writing at least 5 years after the death of Peter, and it still makes a complete pig's breakfast of the place, the language idioms, etc. In fact it's so bad that basically the only reason Matthew writes his own is to correct the hash that Mark made of it. So either Mark's memory was horrible, or Peter may not have been who he said he was either

Edit: and just to hammer on the last one, the late classical and medieval church thought that Peter and Cephas were different persons. Although now it's the consensus that the former is just the Greek translation of the latter, which being supposedly the nickname given to him by Jesus, kinda makes sense to translate. So let's think about it for a moment. They're led for many years by this guy Peter, he even has a secretary recording his life, and yet nobody learns that bit about his name? Can it be that the guy is either made up or, shall we say, padded his resume?

 

[IanS]

The problem is more one of... terminology, though, so to speak. I mean, the same Ehrman will cheerfully tell you that at most 30% of what Jesus said in the bible can possibly come from the same person, and that he disagrees with the others in the field about which 30%. Also that you can discount any magical episodes. And I mean, not just in some interviews on the side. He'll write books and go around giving public lectures about that. But back to what it means, even if you were to grant him the premise that the Bible is enough evidence that someone said this and that, there must be at least 4 different Jesuseseses mixed up in there. And actually if you look at the reconstructions that people did, that's more like two dozen, and that's counting just the ones that do pass the second premise. (I.e., no magical girl Jesus allowed )

And if you look at the one that he's proposing, sure, it's not impossible or even particularly improbable that SOME guy back then was preaching that and SOMEHOW got nailed for it. (Most of the reconstructions have a big gaping plot hole for a historically believable reason to nail him.)

BUT basically my contention is that that reconstruction is not what I'd call a historical Jesus. If you strip all the defining attributes of someone and add your own stuff instead, are you even talking about the same person? I mean, the connection, even if I were to skip over the problems with the methodology and evidence and absolutely grant Ehrman that yep, the book is totally based on that one guy he reconstructed, the connection seems to me EXACTLY like that between Lovecraft's mom and Abdul Al Hazred. Sure, the latter is based on the former, but once you replace the attributes like where she lived, in what year, what she believed, what she wrote, where she travelled, etc, can you REALLY say that she's the historical mad arab? Or can we say that while the latter started based on the former, it grew into being a completely different entity?

Well just on the highlighted stuff about Bart Ehrman - the point is that he does insist that he knows as a matter of complete certainty that Jesus was a real individual, and that he certainly was the individual who people worshiped as the Son of God and who they wrote about in gospels and letters that later became the NT bible ... point is that Ehrman has been repeatedly and emphatically clear saying that Jesus was a certainty lol!

On the question of whether or not the biblical writing was a later attempt at some sort of reconstruction based upon the writers faulty information about what was actually numerous earlier preachers who may or may not have been thought of by some earlier people as the promised messiah, well that's all complete speculation afaik ...

... and it's not the situation that we have now for Christian worshippers today, and it's not what was said in any of the biblical writing (which is our original source for the entire religion) ... the situation today is that Christians do feel absolutely certain that the biblical Jesus did exist, and the biblical writing upon which they base their beliefs also does describe that one specific individual in great detail as Jesus the Son of God in the heavens.

Why make guesses to say that the Jesus figure of the bible might have been an enormous make-believe elaboration based upon numerous earlier preachers (“make-believe” because almost every word written about him in the gospels and letters has turned out to be impossible miraculous nonsense … though people did not understand that in the early centuries AD)? So why make guesses about that? More accurate to stick with what we do have as the actual facts here (as much as we can know anything to be a “fact”); which is that after modern science slowly showed everyone that such miracles and the supernatural are untrue myth, the Jesus figure of the bible is simply not credible any more.